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Tuesday, 7 July 2015

Food Fight

Introducing solids into Gideon's diet has been challenging. Because of his eye surgery, he can't get anything in his eyes due to infection risks so this means playing with his food is not really an option because he could rub it in his eyes. This lead me to making buzzing sounds and tapping my spoon against his mouth in hopes that he would open wide and eat what I had to offer. BUT.... Every time I tried to feed something by spoon he would have a meltdown. He would thrust his tongue out, arch his back and just generally complain a whole lot. I tried shoving it in. I tried scraping it on the top on his mouth. I tried making him smile so he would open his mouth for a stealthy attack. Nothing was working.

Insight of the day:Having unknown things shoved into your mouth when you don't expect it isn't very fun.

So we took it back a notch. I tried putting the spoon by his lips and just dabbing the smallest amount on there for him to try and taste. He started tasting it. I put my spoon by his lips and tried to have him be the one to initiate the bite. Kind of like feeding a horse, the lips will smack a little, the tongue might come out for a taste but you don't put your hand right into the mouth. There was some success with these methods but it was hit or miss and I really wasn't getting much food into him. Gideon was experiencing the food but not really eating it.

That's when I decided to buy a light. I found these finger lights at the dollar store- 4 lights for a dollar. (Red, Green, White and Blue) First I tried attaching the red light to the spoon. Guess what- IT WORKED! The light gave him something to look at and made eating a little more fun. He also knew when the food was getting closer to him. I think he was so distracted by the light that he just auto piloted the eating. This is not to say that he is eating whole bowl fulls of food but I can at least get in 5-10 spoonfuls in which is huge!

Some pointers...

1. It works just as well to have the light on your finger. (I snapped the strap on my red light by stretching it too hard to stay on my spoon.) Having in on the spoon was nice though because you could point the light right at the end of the spoon where the food was.

2. Don't point the light right at your baby's eyes. This light is pretty bright and I found it uncomfortable when pointed at my own eyes.

3. Try out different colours of lights. There might be a preference to one over the other. Remember that red is usually an easier colour to see for children who are visually impaired.